The system of government of the Philippines in its early years of transition to democratic self-government was deliberately structured to emulate the American model. The Philippines thus followed the American system of electing the members of the 24-seat senate by district.
The districts were organized and numbered in a roughly north–south fashion, much like the present administrative regions. The first eleven districts were composed of established provinces, while the twelfth was composed of the provinces of the Luzon interior and much of Mindanao – both of which were never fully administered by the old Spanish colonial government and designated by American authorities as "non-Christian" areas.
The first to eleventh districts elected two senators each by popular vote. The two senators from the twelfth district were appointed by the U.S. governor-general. The setup lasted until the establishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935, when the bicameral legislature was abolished, as the 1935 Constitution provided only for a unicameral National Assembly. However, when the Constitution was amended in 1940 to re-establish a bicameral Congress, members of the Senate had to be voted at-large, thereby effectively abolishing the district system.
^ abPhilippines. Department of Agriculture and Commerce. Division of Statistics (1934). Bulletin of Philippine Statistics. pp. 112–124, 130–145. Retrieved May 15, 2020.
